Conventional distributed databases have become sophisticated in their architectures, and many have the ability to be customized to a variety of performance guarantees. Distributed databases executing eventual consistency models can be specifically tailored to achieve any number of durability guarantees. For instance, some distributed databases can be customized to target high durability of data writes, or to target low latency of writes, among other examples.
In some conventional systems, different architectures can be implemented to support automatic failover of master or primary nodes (i.e., nodes responsible for processing write operations) without loss of any committed data. One example approach is described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,572,031 incorporated by reference herein. Under that approach, primary nodes are elected to handle operations received from database clients, and replicate the operations to secondary nodes. To facilitate assignment of a primary node, a distributed database may include arbiter nodes that facilitate a consensus-based election of primary nodes between the primary and secondary nodes of the distributed database. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,572,031, the arbiter nodes can be configured to operate as observers of primary election, and further to participate in a primary election process to the extent of confirming a vote for a primary or a secondary node within the distributed database.